


debts long due

by rayfelle



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Mentor Regulus, Regulus Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-06
Updated: 2016-12-06
Packaged: 2018-09-07 00:28:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8775955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rayfelle/pseuds/rayfelle
Summary: A runaway child and a man, who should have died years ago - what a pair they made.(or, Regulus kidnaps Harry and sometimes they go on horcurx hunts)





	

The Potter boy looked like one of the inferi, which were buried under the ice-cold waters of that cursed cave. Eyes too bright green to be anything but creepy, skin pale and tight against his bones, the wry muscles ( _starved? haunted? stranger in his own body?_ ), body coiled and ready for both fight and flight.

This boy was just fifteen, not even a month after Sirius’ death (Regulus mourned, he truly did, as much as he allowed himself to) and already forced to become a soldier for someone else’s wars. Had Regulus been the same? Seventeen and already a blind follower - modeled by his family and forced to bow.

The two of them truly were alike, in the most strangest of ways.

A child of fifteen - hailed as a hero and then shunned as a liar. To once again be used as a propaganda and an easy way out. Their world, the magical world, truly was nothing more but a den of vultures that prayed on the tortured and starved. Disgusting. But that is why Regulus was here now. He wanted to repay his depts. He wanted to do something for his dead brother. And finish what he started, even if it may hold no meaning right now.

“You were supposed to be dead.” Harry hissed into the still air of the pathetic excuse of a bedroom. Muggles, they were disgusting indeed. To keep someone with this kind of potential locked up like some kind of a pig meant for slaughter. “And a Death Eater. Supposedly.” Green eyes glowed eerily in the darkness, asking for answers.

Regulus curled his mouth in disgust as his eyes roamed over the dust and the dirt, the prisoners cell the Order had pushed the child (but was Harry really a child anymore?) into. “Supposedly. And you should be, supposedly, living the luxury life, being trained to kill the Dark Lord.” He threw back, because two could play this game. A Slytherin never reveals his plans and secrets just like that.

Harry smiled. And it was such an ugly thing, all jagged lines and bared teeth, no humor and feral. “Yeah, well. I think Dumbledore wants his _precious weapon_ to be easily influenced.” The boy then laughed, his fingers twirled the wand round and round.

“How, pray tell, did you ever get sorted into Gryffindor?” The youngest Black (or rather, the only Black still alive) titled his head in contemplation. What a pair they were indeed – a twisted Gryffindor and a fucked up Slytherin. This will be fun.

…

“That was laughably easy for a breakout. I was under the impression that the Order was guarding you.” Regulus was leading the two of them down an abandoned dirt road, somewhere near Durham. The Black estate he had been living in until now stood out between the fog-hidden fields.

Harry looked around with interest, his wand still held loosely between his fingers. Though, it was obvious that the boy was alert and with even the littlest need he will attack with little difficulty. “This wouldn’t be the first time I escape their _watch_. The only ones who actually try are Moody, Shacklebolt and Remus.”

Regulus glanced back over his shoulders, amused by the new information. It told a lot about the “so called” forces of Light, when a teenager was able to fool them all so easily. “I take it you have gone on some excursions, all thanks to your babysitters?” It was easy to tell that Harry had not lived in his room for too long. During a whole month spent in it, there should have been more things, more changes. Instead there was dust covering every surface, old pages yellowed with time.

“Less excursions and more fucking with the wards.” Harry replied flippantly. He then raised his left hand in the air, allowed a white owl settle on it. Ah, such contrast between owner and familiar. “But, like I said, only three of them try and today was supposed to be Moody’s turn to sit in the bushes and watch over me. As if that would stop anyone.”

“Dumbledore is not known for logic, I am afraid. What kind of wards were you trying to destroy, if I may ask?” It had been far too easy for Regulus to find the house and break in. Had they been the kind of wards that kept out dark magic, then whoever had casted them was even worse than a beginner. Or, perhaps, there was something else put around the property.

The boy cooed at his owl before answering (his eyes had gone soft, less ice and tortured pain). “Blood wards. Supposed to protect me from your former boss. I call bullshit, but what can I know? After all, I am just a _poor, oblivious_ boy.” His words had taken a mocking tone, voice low and reminiscent of a mix between Snape and Dumbledore.

“Hm. I will want to know more about that, if you will. But for now,” Regulus stopped before the tall, black gates that stood between the world and another Black family manor. “I welcome you, Harridan James Potter, to Sacriston Manor. Oldest of the Black estates.” And then the fog lifted and the gates creaked open.

…

Harry didn’t eat a lot. He barely touched the things laid before him, picking at the food with the kind of wariness that suggested of already lived-through hit and miss meals. It was hard to go from almost nothing to so much. Regulus had never lived through it himself, but he had seen kids during his own schooling years that treated food as the biggest treasure and the most poisonous of venoms.

“Those wards sound extremely useless.” Regulus said instead of empty worry about the child’s living conditions (why point out that, which was obvious already?). “They might keep the Dark Lord away, but everyone else is free to walk inside the house and kill you together those muggles. Forgive my bluntness, but how are you not dead yet?”

“You aren’t the only one who wants to know that. And many have tried.” Harry poked his potatoes and gave up on eating anything else. He did go for the orange juice. “I think the Death Eaters believe the thing about me living on some special training grounds. Who would believe that the _Boy-Who-Lived_ is living where I was? _Preposterous_.” He laughed but there was no humor. Just cold anger.

How utterly fascinating.

Regulus cocked his head to the side and observed. The teenager that wasn’t one, the savior that seemed more content in simply watching the world burn. The perfectly modeled little soldier that had actually set the self-destruction of his own side in motion. Did Sirius know about this side of Harry? Did _anyone else_ know that their precious little Savior was nothing more than a perfectly masked madman?

Harry blinked and looked straight into Regulus’ eyes – the boy seemed to know what the other was thinking. “They see what they want to see, not what actually is happening. And I can be a good actor and a good liar, when I want to be.” And there was that.

…

The letters started to come a week later (and what a week it had been, so many new revelations, so many secrets laid in the open for everyone to see). Regulus had thought it would take a day, at most, but assured by Harry about the competence of his guards, the man simply stared at how his new charge went though the letters. The boy laughed, the sound laced with annoyance, set a few letters on fire and then glared at the one that was clearly from Dumbledore.

“This old goat, he thinks he can order me around. Says he will find me anyway if I even think about using my magic. _Hah_ , like hell he will.” Harry squinted at the curved, purple letters on the parchment. The boy’s lips were pulled into an ugly snarl, his eyes quickly running over the words. “I got rid of the trace after my fourth year, not that it helped much. _Bloody dementors_.”

Regulus wanted to ask so many things right now, but decided against it. Harry simply had too many adventures to tell about – good and bad. “Even if you had not, this place is under fidelius. No one can find you as long as I don’t allow them to.” He then reached out and pulled a letter written on muggle stationary out of the pile to read. “Hermione Granger. Bossy, isn’t she?”

“ _Really_. Sometimes I don’t know how I manage not to tell her off. Bad for the image you know, the whole traumatized orphan thing I have going on. And she has good notes.” Harry crumbled up Dumbledore’s letter and set it on fire with a pleased hum. The rest of the letters that various members of Order and his friends had sent him the boy ignored. “I am tired of _all of this_.”

And it did seem tiring. This, _this controlling_. Like a dog that had misbehaved, the Order was trying to put Harry in a time out, back on the right track of ignorance and blind servitude. The boy might be damaged and warped; suffering from more mental trauma than anyone Regulus might know (but then again, wasn’t Regulus just as crazy?), but he was still a human being. Harry was still capable of thinking for himself, of rational thought, of making his own decisions. A grown up survivor in the body of a starved and beaten child.

Frightening, almost, what Dumbledore had created.

“Good thing you will be staying with me, then. I am sure we can find something more interesting to do, than just locking you away and pretending that nothing is happening.” Regulus chuckled at the fake pout sent his way, amused and also weary. So much to do, so much to plan.

The day Kreacher had been taken by the Dark Lord was the day Regulus started his own crusade against Voldemort. Dark, disgusting secrets came to light. Rituals upon rituals, split souls and treasures hidden in the darkest corners of the land – horcruxes, destinies, prophecies. _Vincit qui patitur_ , was it not?

Harry blinked slowly, his body sprawled over the chair. The look on his face was one Regulus had seen on his father’s face countless of times – that of a predator in the middle of a calculation for a kill. The boy was _nothing_ like he was made to be. Oh how blind the society was when it missed the emptiness eating the boy alive from within.

…

“Huh, so he really did get as close to immortality as he could. This is all very disgusting though.” Harry muttered to himself, his eyes frozen on the pages and pages of Regulus’ elegant handwriting. There were notes scattered on the table before him, more on the various places that could work, ideas for the treasures that hid the biggest secret of them all.

Regulus lets his finger gently slide over the cracked remains of the Slytherin’s locket laid before him. As if he almost felt attached to the soiled thing, so long has it been with him (since that day in the cave, so long ago, _how did he even get out of there_ ). “It is. The process is agonizing; the act goes against everything precious and sacred. Perfect for the Dark Lord.”

Harry clicked his tongue, muttered something too low to hear and then looked up from the papers in his hands. “You said he hid those things in places he liked the most, right?” His eyes shined with a revelation of sorts, the kind of mad _I figured something out_ that reminded Regulus of his dead brother.

Parallels. So many parallels stretched out before him.

“Places with a meaning of sorts, for him, yes. You figured something out.” It wasn’t a question, not really a statement. Out of all the people alive on this planet, Harry Potter _knew_ Voldemort the best. Two sides of the coin and all that. Sometimes they bled into one, sometimes Harry confessed to feeling like a stranger in his own body. After nightmares filled with death and red, red eyes.

“Hogwarts.” The boy said simply enough. “Hogwarts was precious to him. Just like it was for me. Because I know how it feels to finally find a place that feels more like home than anywhere else.” A dark cupboard and a small room at the orphanage. The Dursleys and their hatred; the other children that teased and mocked. Starvation (food and affection, both in equal doses)

So many parallels still. Of course Harry would know.

“It will be hard to find the one hidden there.” Regulus speaks as he stands up. Slowly he circles the table, approaches Harry like one would a wounded animal. “But you are not him. Never will be.” _Because I am here now_ , he doesn’t say. And yet the teenager relaxes in Regulus’ arms, sags into himself and looks so, so weak.

…

Regulus wanted to let Harry return to Hogwarts, but they both knew that it couldn’t be done. Not after the escape from the Dursleys, not after the hundreds of ignored letters and the knowledge of horcruxes. Too much was at stake and they had to act now, while nothing stood in their way and the trail was warm.

“This place looks like a dump.” Harry hissed at the dead snake hammered on the door, glamour cast on the skeleton to hide it from the eyes of muggles. “The last of Slytherins.” No one deserved an end like this, but the boy was bitter towards the family that destroyed his life, even if the last heir of the once Noble House was the only one to blame.

“When the mighty fall, they fall hard.” Regulus kicked the door open with little fanfare and cast spells on the rotten wood of the shack. Harry stayed behind, green eyes watching the horizon and the sunrise with suspicion and readiness. “This one is better guarded than the cup; I admit that, but still weak.”

Harry slides his gaze towards the Riddle manor and the graveyard ( _he knows it, he knows this place so well and his insides turn_ ). “Maybe he got better with time? The diary was pretty shoddily hidden and protected as well.” The boy tensed for a second, his green eyes snapped towards the ring now laid in plain sight by Regulus’ spells.

Something is wrong with the ring, with the magic that surrounds the small house. It’s chocking, stiff and old. Poison that makes one bleed from the inside. Regulus reached forward, fingers trembling and body moving on its own – _take the ring_! So many people he wanted to see, so many dead ones he wanted to ask forgiveness from.

Harry jabbed his guardian hard in the ribs and sent an _incendio_ to burn it, burn everything. “Don’t listen to it. I thought you knew!”

“Will not work. Needs fiendfyre.” Regulus looked down on his traitors hands, then up again. “Thank you. I knew what it was but, it was stronger than me.” Once more he pulled the boy out of the house and then set in on fire. Watched it burn until nothing was left.

They took the stone that had been in the ring with them, anyway. A memento.

…

“So it’s four down, now.” Harry sat in front of the fireplace, curled up in blankets. His eyes didn’t see the flames, Regulus could tell. He had been there as well, once. “Two more to go, you said. One in Hogwarts.” He breathed and there was tiredness flowing out from his bones. So young, but never a child.

Regulus gently slid his fingers through the black locks, pretended he didn't see what Harry didn’t want others to notice. “Three, I think. He was always a fan of seven. Seven hideouts, seven Most Inner Circle members, seven horcuxes. The Dark Lord is predictable, sometimes.”

“How do you know that he has seven? Isn’t what’s left in him the seventh piece?” The teenager asked, tired in a way that can never be cured. Curiosity still made him ask questions, just like a child would. But he shouldn’t even know about these dark, disgusting things. Shouldn’t think about the best ways to kill a madman.

“He liked to gloat. When he was in the company of his most trusted, at least.” _And he told me of his plans for one more; when he thought I will die for sure_ , Regulus thought and never said as he looked directly into the flames as well. There were things that he might never tell a soul about, secrets that were best kept hidden.

Harry, Regulus knew, was the same.

…

War loomed over their heads and the air grew colder still with each dementor that slid past the gates of Sacriston Manor. Harry held his hand against his forehead, trembling with the aftermath of another vision, another strong emotion not his pushing past the weak shields of his mind. His scar _burned_ and dripped warm blood from where the boy’s fingers had dug into unmarred skin, seeking for relief.

“ _Don’t_.” Regulus hissed into the darkness of the night. He pried Harry’s hands from the boy’s face and pinned them against the mattress with his own weight. “Harry, wake up!” With a click of his tongue, the man then risked more scratches of the teenager’s nails, when he released one of Harry’s wrists to swing his own hand back and deliver a strong slap across one of the boy’s cheeks.

The slap echoed in the room, cut the choked whines as if with a knife. Harry slowly opened his eyes, red and watery, his hands still trembled and blood was smeared across his forehead and nose. His gasps soon became too loud, too hurried.

“ _Don’t_. Breathe through your nose, don’t let it eat you.” Regulus spoke softer now, careful of the volume of his voice, steel of his words. This was no time to be demanding and in perfect control of his emotions and actions. Panic attacks were not something you forced to stop. They could not be forced to leave to never return.

Harry choked on nothing; his hands came up to pull on the t-shirt that already hung loose from his shoulders. “He’s… He is mad, he— _I can’t_ , there was _crucio_ and someone screamed, _Regulus_!” Desperation clung onto the teenager like clumps of clay; his words broke and refused to be rebuilt. “I am so afraid of him.”

It was merely a whisper, a revelation of the deepest secrets hid at the very bottom of one’s soul and being. Regulus knew and understood – he feared that monster with every nerve in his body, with every part of his soul. “I am here.” Is what Regulus let past his lips instead of empty and impossible promises, for those can never be protected anyway.

…

“The connection you have with the Dark Lord, it’s not natural and it is not safe.” Regulus kept his eyes firmly on the swollen lightning bolt carved onto Harry’s forehead. “Have you had occlumency training?” The directions that his mind had went to, after getting to know of the visions, was not one that Regulus liked.

All it ended upon were theories as bitter as charcoal on tongue. They ended with dark magic and split souls, with Harry dying long before his time.

Harry scraped his nails along the polished table surface, green eyes now alight and burning everything before them. It was only after a moment of heavy breathing that he spoke, “Dumbledore made me go to Snape for lessons last year. Each and every time it felt like my mind was forced open and left even more vulnerable than before.”

“Severus… He is one of the best at occlumency. It only makes sense to send you to him.” The Black heir leaned back into his chair and observed the boy before him. Hunched shoulders, tense muscles and the twitchy fingers. Hatred and disgust morphed the boy’s face with age and ancient loathing towards something kept in the shadows for far too long. “Severus, he loved your mother very much, they were best friends before coming to Hogwarts. He should have done his best to teach you well.” A shot in the dark, a question without asking.

Harry’s lips twitched just slightly. “He loathed my father more than he loved my mother, then.” Poison green bled into cold ice as the boy lifted his head and looked Regulus straight in the eyes, unafraid to lay the memories of last year bared and vulnerable before them. “And he despises me the most.”

…

Once more Harry looked like a corpse come to life. Like one of the inferi that had crawled out of the ice cold water of Voldemort’s cave. And gone was the spiteful ignition fueling the body. Gone was the child that wished so _deeply_ for freedom and life lived on his own terms.

Oftentimes Regulus had wondered how it would look, to see a man die while still alive. Now he wished to never have thought of such horror, such sadness.

“I’m a fucking horcrux. Number seven, unwanted _number seven_.” Harry laughed. Brittle and jaded, the boy looked nowhere but up at the dusty ceilings and cobwebs thrown in the corners. “I bet Dumbledore knew all this time. Curse scar, right.” He breathed out slowly, fingers curling into fists and then loosening again, as strength seemed to flow away from the boy’s bones.

Regulus had wanted to keep this theory a secret. Because it was too heavy, too cruel of a possibility to place in front of a child that has never had anything to call his own. But Regulus also knew how valuable was truth, how deeply it was appreciated when the times seemed grim and there were decisions that had to be made. No words could console the child raised as nothing more than another sacrifice in this war. Too young, too young.

“Can….” Harry started and then quieted down once more. His chest rose slowly, his eyes now closed to the world and lips bitten red. “Is there anything to be done?” Death loomed just around the corner, black claws rotting away the walls between it and one of the two left with Peverell blood that still breathed.

“I don’t know. There was nothing written in the books about the cases when the vessel is something alive.” Regulus steeled his fingers in front of his face – to hide the desperation hidden deep in his eyes, to play a theater of calculated calmness. “Only the owner of a horcrux can destroy it without harming the vessel.” A soul piece latched onto another soul. One body and… two… souls.

Two souls. A whole and a broken piece, no bigger than the smallest of fires left to die alone in a field of burned soil and destroyed life. Regulus’ eyes stayed frozen on the lightning bolt carved onto Harry’s forehead with hatred and madness for victory, for power. The sun - _sowilo_. An anchor that kept the rotting part of The Dark Lord tethered to this jaded land. A scar and nothing else, a connection to the mind of what little was left of Tom Riddle still in his own body.

Regulus breathed slow. Harry shivered with something that the boy dared not let loose and break. With no sound Regulus raised his wand and aimed. His arm was steady, accurate as it slid through the air and pointed directly at the start and end of Harry’s legacy, his legend of a child that survived that, which cannot be survived.

“ _Avada Kedavra._ ”

…

The morning woke bright and warm, for a cold and harsh winter that runs through the lifeless trees and empty streets. Regulus had not slept the night. His wand now stayed untouched, left on the table between him and Harry. Only sound floating between the rooms left empty and their crossed gazes was the ticking of the clock, rattle of glass against the onslaught of wind.

Harry’s face was hidden under dried blood still. His eyes were now an energy that never stopped, his hands weak under the weight of the brightest of green that had torn into his flesh once again. But this time it left behind a hole that was cleansed of the filth that used to burrow between dead tissue and tears not healed right. A childish awe flittered though the shock the more Harry came back from the dark place, the better the boy breathed and took in the loss of weight that had been drinking away his magic and muddled up his mind

They don’t talk about it. Not in the sense where words were needed, actions explained in excruciating detail and every second was accounted for, revisited over and over again.

Harry read magic like a child would a picture book ( _but maybe not, maybe he simply felt and his intuition whispered like a mother forgotten, in his ear_ ). His fingers slid over the scar that was and has stopped being. There was still a wound left behind, of course, one that will never fade. But now it was nothing more than a reminder and a footprint of a past left behind. Nothing clung to the edges of it; nothing burrowed deep and hid away in it anymore.

“Thank you.” The boy laughed and years fell off his face and body used too much. “Thank you, Regulus. I… It feels so… _light_ now. Everything. My magic, my… my fingers are tingling?” It should not feel like that, the Black Lord knew, but this boy had been through too much and now had a chance to sit down and soak in the sunrays and dust with his too pale skin. Stress, panic, emotions that were too much – as natural as the air that lets them survive.

Regulus finally stood from where he sat and moved to kneel before the child lost and found again. His fingers were gentle, yet firm, as he settled them on Harry’s shoulders. He pulled the boy in for a hug that was more precious to the teenager than all the treasures thrown and buried in the four corners of the world. “I’m sorry you had to wait this long for someone to finally start caring.”

It was not a beginning, but neither was it an end. It was the middle, simply another step they have taken to move forward. And yet it felt like a small victory nonetheless. A runaway child and a man, who should have died years ago - what a pair they made. They will conquer mountains with bleeding fingers and torn skin.

They started at the bottom, but they will reach the zenith.


End file.
